How Do You Really Forgive?

Christianity and A Course in Miracles both focus a lot on forgiveness. Jesus really tried to teach forgiveness to the people of his time, but they weren't yet able to understand what he was really trying to teach, as I have shown in my other posts. Today, forgiveness has basically been taught and interpreted in a way that causes too many problems and seems ineffective. People usually either need to be convinced enough to forgive someone, label everyone as sinners (including themselves), and/or make themselves bigger or better than everyone else.

The first of these three is not a "technique" that should be practiced, since it is not applicable in every situation. For example, someone barges into your house and murders your spouse. What can be a convincing argument that will make you get over it and not hold grudges against the murderer anymore? If you even manage to do so, how can this be applied to every other situation?

The second and third are "techniques" that can be applied to every situation, but they both reinforce a barrier against God, which is the opposite of what you want to happen. Acknowledging that everyone is not perfect causes fear, guilt, sadness, pain, etc., which means that no one will feel that they are free from the labels of everyone else. No one would ever again be Christ-like if everyone used this way of forgiving, since Christ knows he is perfect and he acknowledges the perfectness in everyone. Seeing everyone as a sinner or imperfect will never let you realize that you are actually perfect.

The third "technique" is the ego's way of forgiving. You are preferring separation when you want to make levels of importance, so "playing the role of God" does not allow you to see the oneness that God is. Making yourself bigger than everyone shows that you prefer individuality which is what the ego is all about. "They are the sinners, and I'm perfect. Therefore, I will forgive them for being worse than me."

We are all labeling everything we see and making it what it is. When we see a new person, we instantly assume what they are like. So, we are never really seeing it for what it is. God has a label for everything, and it's the simplest one possible: everything is perfect. He created everything how it needed to be so that it is in favor of our maximum joy, bliss, and peace. The problem is that we have labeled our whole situation and made everything separate. We are under the influence of our made-up ego.

The good thing is that we know that everything that we encounter in our life-situation was made by us and not by God, so we can actually surrender our ideas to God's perfect creation. That's how we really forgive. If someone does murder your spouse, you know it was your idea and you are just doing it to yourself. It is only real as long as you think it is. God would never have this happen; he wouldn't even create things separated. He loves us that much! So just know that your-life situation is not real, but was only made up by you. God wills the best for everyone and everything.

I have discovered this to be true because of my experience in the hospital. I would think things are happening to me when they aren't, since no-one else is experiencing it. So I was creating the seeming horror in my life. Just recently, I've understood that it goes further than that. Maybe I'm not the only delusional one; is the whole world living under the same influence? After that realization, I got to get a sneak peek at how things really are. I have to say, we all got it wrong. True forgiveness is giving up our painful delusions in order to know perfection everywhere.